Wednesday, 13 April 2011

BBC Turn Back Time 'Butchers'

I’ve been watching Turn Back Time: The High Street and think it has been brilliant and it’s been especially interesting to my 15 year old daughter.
We live in central Sydney, Australia, but I buy most of our food etc from a local farmers’ market at a local school on Saturday morning. One thing I don’t buy there is meat. I get that from a local butcher, one of the last original ones surviving in our area. A few years ago I thought he would go the same way as all the rest, but he has hung on and has turned the corner. He is now so busy he can hardly keep up. He is in his 50’s, I guess, and is the 4th or 5th generation to own the shop.Turn Back Time - a short-lived experiment that failed to revitalize Shepton’s High Street
Although he has to abide by the stringent health requirements here, his shop still looks like a traditional butchers. It’s not fancy and you can see him cutting up and preparing the meat.
I can’t understand why someone like the butcher used in the TV program, or indeed that very man, cannot restart that butcher’s shop in the High Street and make a huge success of it.
In general, Australia is at least 2-5 years behind UK in it’s thinking, especially on things like Climate Change, the Environment and Transition Towns. I find it hard to believe that in resurrecting these small specialist local businesses Sydney is actually more enlightened.- Posted by Tazeennnaart / Austrialia